Many biological processes, especially those in the nervous systems that occur on the order of milliseconds, take place with rapid temporal scales. Identification of bioactive compounds or nucleic acids to probe mechanistic processes and development of leads for treating diseases are vital aspects to advancing and expanding research at Johns Hopkins. These projects as well as other biological signaling processes often require specialized instrumentation, expensive but necessary reagents and unique technical expertise. Such prerequisites prohibit individual labs from tackling important problems in these areas. To surmount this barrier, we propose to acquire a fast and high throughput fluorescence kinetics reader system. The shared instrument will be incorporated into already operating high throughput compound screen facility, ChemCORE. The combination of the to-be-acquired instrumentation with existing expertise provides both resources and services that are difficult or impractical for individual laboratories to accomplish on their own. The use of this instrument will leverage the existing robotics capability and chemical libraries at Hopkins and will significantly enhance on-going research programs and stimulate new directions of research as outlined in the proposed core projects by investigators from different departments and campuses. The new experimental opportunities offered by the to-be-acquired instrument complement, but do not duplicate, existing University Core facilities. The core project leaders have unusually strong histories leading research programs and productive collaborations. Their projects as detailed in the proposal address conceptually or clinically important questions in different areas of biomedical sciences that interface basic research and translational applications. Therefore, the capital investment of this instrumentation capability within ChemCORE both enables and expands collaborative research of NIH-funded projects. The combined capability of high throughput compound screens against disease targets and the broadening accessibility of high-end instrument to individual laboratories will facilitate clinical intervention of human diseases. PHS 398/2590 (Rev. 05/01 [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]